Honoring the Gartner Top 25

From the September-October 2025 edition of Supply Chain Management Review.

September-October 2025

This issue of Supply Chain Management Review explores the technologies, strategies, and leadership practices shaping next-generation supply chains. Features include Gartner’s 2025 Top 25 Supply Chains and an…

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The world’s top supply chains aren’t just optimizing for cost or efficiency anymore—they’re redefining the very purpose of supply chain management. According to Gartner’s 2025 Supply Chain Top 25, the most admired global companies are leaning into automation, AI, and environmental stewardship to drive business outcomes and societal impact alike.

At the top of the list for the third straight year is Schneider Electric, recognized for its advanced use of AI, network planning flexibility, and ability to link sustainability with strategic business goals.

“They’re showing that supply chain is no longer a back-office function,” said Simon Bailey, senior director analyst at Gartner and co-author of the report. “It’s central to business—bringing resilience and value in equal measure.”

Joining Schneider in the top five are NVIDIA, Cisco Systems, AstraZeneca, and Johnson & Johnson—a mix of tech, life sciences, and healthcare firms that all demonstrate clear, visionary leadership and a strong commitment to innovation. In an interview with Supply Chain Management Review, Bailey talked about what makes the companies inside the Top 25 special. He identified three main themes in this year’s list: Agentic AI, autonomous operations, and water stewardship.

Water as strategy, not just for sustainability

One of the most surprising takeaways from this year’s research was the universal focus on water stewardship—not just water management, Bailey said. “We heard company after company talk about water in terms of resilience, not just ESG,” he said.

That shift is visible in companies like Danone (No. 10), Nestlé (No. 11) and General Mills (No. 17), which are embedding water stewardship into core operations. Danone, for example, is partnering with governments to restore ecosystems in water-stressed regions, while Nestlé is reclaiming water from slurry and converting it into clean water and fertilizer.

From automation to autonomy

Another standout trend: the rise of autonomous operations. Companies are connecting previously isolated “islands of automation” into intelligent, self-regulating systems that span factories, warehouses, and even customer interfaces. Bailey explained that leading companies are not just implementing autonomous technologies, but connecting them in a way that maximizes benefits across the operation. Unilever, for example, has integrated autonomous operations at its factory in China, linking production and warehousing to run with minimal human intervention. Lenovo is using AI agents to dynamically configure products in collaboration with customers.

Agentic AI: Still emerging, but promising

While still in its early stages, Agentic AI is already being tested in areas like demand forecasting, contract negotiations, and planning. By 2028, 15% of day-to-day supply chain decisions will be made autonomously by AI Agents, Gartner noted. Digital twins are also gaining traction, with the firm predicting 40% of global manufacturers using the tech to reduce factory operating costs by 2029. That number is at only 10% today.

What makes a Top 25 supply chain?

Gartner’s ranking combines financial performance, ESG impact, peer and analyst opinions, and a few intangible but critical factors—vision, maturity, and long-term excellence. Bailey noted that companies like Procter & Gamble, Apple, and Amazon—along with Unilever—are celebrated as “Masters” for demonstrating consistent, long-term leadership. “What sets them apart is how their supply chains drive business success year after year,” he said.

Even rising players are showing what’s possible. Novartis leapt 41 places in this year’s rankings, landing at number 16, fueled by a strategic refocus following a spinoff. “They’ve re-crafted their business around their identity as a life sciences company,” said Bailey. “Their financial indicators have all strengthened, and they’ve doubled down on delivering to their customers.”

The Masters

Of special note each year are the Masters companies. This year, Amazon, Apple, Procter & Gamble, and Unilever maintained their Masters status. These companies have met the criteria set forth by Gartner for this special category. To become or remain a Master, a company must have received that credit for at least seven of the last 10 years. If a Master’s number of credits drops below the seven required over 10 years, the company returns to the main ranking. No company fell out this year and no new company was added.

Each of the Masters has achieved special status because they continue to lead the way in terms of leveraging the supply chain to drive business outcomes. Amazon has achieved a 25% reduction delivery costs as its Shreveport, La., facility, by integrating advanced robotics systems. Apple, an 11-time Masters company, is focused on deploying automation and minimizing resource usage. P&G, also a Masters for the 11th time, has recently implemented its Supply Chain 3.0 strategy. Unilever, in its 7th year as a Master, is knee-deep in implementing its Unilever Manufacturing System methodology of autonomous operations.

What follows is short summaries of the Masters and Top 10 companies for this year (reprinted with permission of Gartner). A full analysis of the top trends and company summaries of the entire Top 25 is available on the Gartner website at: https://www.gartner.com/en/supply-chain/research/supply-chain-top-25.

The Masters Companies

Amazon

Amazon continues to be recognized for its leadership as a customer-centric, highly automated supply chain. In 2024, Amazon advanced its AI-driven supply chain by enhancing demand forecasting, logistics optimization, and inventory management, improving efficiency and customer satisfaction. A notable development was the opening of a robotics-driven fulfillment center in Shreveport, La., which achieved a 25% reduction in delivery costs by integrating advanced robotics systems such as Proteus and Sparrow. As Amazon invests in autonomous operations, overall company investments in robotics and automation include a $25 billion allocation for robotics-led warehouses. 

Apple

Apple’s progress in autonomous operations is backed by investment in robotics and automation. As the majority of its manufacturing is outsourced, Apple’s goal is shared with its key manufacturing partners, such as Foxconn, which has built factories in China, Taiwan, and Mexico that can operate with minimal human supervision. Apple has achieved 98% fiber-based product packaging, and 24% of the materials shipped in Apple products now come from recycled or renewable sources. Apple 2030 goals include replenishing 100% of the fresh water used in corporate operations in high-stress locations.

Procter & Gamble

P&G’s supply chain ethos is encapsulated in its Supply Chain 3.0 integrated strategy that shapes how retail execution, productivity, value and constructive disruption are all enabled by an empowered, agile and accountable organization. The company reduces customer effort through data synchronization and automation of the delivery of products, which can reduce the time to check in an entire shipment down to as little as 10 minutes.

P&G has built on a strong foundation of automation and early AI adoption over the years and is now demonstrating leadership with Agentic AI and autonomous operations. P&G has integrated predictive analytics and machine learning to reduce inquiry response times and labor costs.

Unilever

The Unilever Manufacturing System (UMS) methodology is pushing the boundaries of autonomous operations. This capability is showcased with a new fulfillment model recently unveiled at its production facility in Hefei, China, which is called “Factory to Consumer.” This model achieves a 90% level of automation within the manufacturing and logistics processes, and provides Unilever the operational flexibility to rapidly develop and set the pace in China’s dynamic e- commerce market. Nearly 120 robots collaborate together to receive materials, sort products, package, load, and transport an average of 20,000 orders per day. The site is supported by an AI-based management system that can sense shifts in consumer demand and uses these signals to proactively adjust operational plans.

The Gartner Supply Chain Top 25

1. Schneider Electric

Energy management and automation specialist Schneider Electric retains the No. 1 spot for the third year in a row in Gartner’s Top 25 Supply Chain ranking. Following the completion of the STRIVE (sustainable, trusted, resilient, intelligent, velocity, and efficiency) program, Schneider Electric launched a new three-year transformation journey, Impact Supply Chain. The program is oriented around four pillars: people, planet, customers and performance. The company has already made significant strides in industrial automation, integrating advanced technologies such as generative AI (GenAI).

2. NVIDIA

Continuing its climb from last year when NVIDIA smashed straight into the Top 25 at No. 7, NVIDIA now breaks into the top five at No. 2. NVIDIA requires the seamless collaboration of hundreds of partners supplying thousands of components to a dozen factories and so it is willing to invest to secure long-term capacity with its key suppliers. For example, it secured over 70% of TSMC’s CoWoS-L advanced packaging capacity for 2025 to support NVIDIA’s latest Blackwell architecture GPU chip production needs. NVIDIA is expanding U.S. manufacturing, commissioning over a hundred thousand square meters of manufacturing space in Arizona and Texas for Blackwell chips and AI supercomputers.

3. Cisco Systems

High-tech leader Cisco Systems features in the top five again this year at No. 3. One of Cisco Systems’ differentiating features is the level to which it has outsourced its manufacturing and how it orchestrates production across a global network of hundreds of suppliers and partners. This strategy is clearly visible in its return on physical assets (ROPA), which is consistently among the highest in the Top 25. Cisco has embedded AI/ML in product quality, where it has a library of failure signatures (“why things fail”) that help the customer service team respond to inquiries from customers when they are having issues in the field and drive down avoidable returns by double digits.

4. AstraZeneca

AstraZeneca (AZ) has continued its rise up the Top 25, coming into the top five for the first time at No. 4 and taking the top spot among life science companies. AZ won the process and technology innovation category for Gartner’s 2025 Power of the Profession Innovation Awards program with its continuous manufacturing transformation. AZ transformed its oral solid dosage tablet manufacturing technology to continuous direct compression, achieving a 67% reduction in lead time from development to stable production and a 98% decrease in cycle time. AZ is one of only a handful of ranked companies to secure all 10 ESG points this year.

5. Johnson & Johnson

Johnson & Johnson (J&J) has been ranked in Gartner’s Top 25 Supply Chain every year for the past 21 years, and 2025 is its sixth consecutive year in the top five, at No. 5 in 2025. Since the spin-off of its consumer health business into Kenvue, J&J’s supply chain has been wholly focused on enabling its innovative medicine and med tech divisions through digital excellence, process improvement and innovation. Through supply chain maps and digital twins, J&J was able to make impactful decisions to improve design and make trade-offs to support future product life cycles for the next decade or more.

6. L’Oréal

Beauty company L’Oréal maintains its ranking at No. 6. for the second year in a row. L’Oréal has accelerated its digitization efforts to adapt to market volatility and customer expectations by improving speed and scale of execution with digital automation. Its investments include autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) and automated case-picking solutions in its warehouses to enhance operational efficiency, storage density and fulfillment agility. L’Oréal took another step toward autonomous operations with the opening of a smart fulfillment center in Suzhou, China, that integrates advanced technologies such as automated picking lines, mobile robots, and data-optimized operations.

7. Colgate-Palmolive

Consumer products company Colgate-Palmolive moves to No. 7 for 2025. With its top-to-bottom focus on AI dexterity, Colgate-Palmolive’s leading digital capabilities include its “AI Hub,” which serves as an integrated digital warehouse containing various AI models and tools. Access to this resource has been democratized to the broader employee base upon completion of training on topics such as AI guardrails, keeping a human in the loop, and how to use AI responsibly. The company uses GenAI tools to assign the task of enhancing product landing pages in the e-commerce channel, and has accelerated innovation through the application of two AI systems working in tandem.

8. Lenovo

Lenovo rises to No. 8, matching its highest-ever rating achieved in 2023, and continues to be the highest ranked Asia/Pacific company. It remains committed to leveraging its global, flexible and resilient supply chain to navigate macroeconomic uncertainties, and one example is the company’s manufacturing expansion in the Middle East. The company has developed a tool that provides extensive visibility into the performance of its supply chain. The tool provides risk alerts, decision making and automation. So, if Lenovo’s logistics suffer from congested transportation lanes, the system will automatically flag that it has a potential risk of delay, look at all the potential alternatives and their cost, and make a recommendation.

9. Microsoft

High-tech company Microsoft moves to No. 9 this year. Microsoft’s supply chain provides the critical infrastructure that supports both its cloud services and its devices business. Microsoft has invested heavily in automating its supply chain processes for the company’s data centers. It leverages algorithms and systems-led capabilities as it moves toward autonomous operations in its tightly interlinked order management and demand and capacity fulfillment processes to manage the scale and size of its diverse customer portfolio. Demand-sensing algorithms detect usage and consumption of capacity over time to avoid customer disruptions. Demand-shaping algorithms give real-time recommendations to customers on what cloud capacity is available by region and SKU to maintain a frictionless capacity experience.

10. Danone

Danone has broken into the top 10 for the first time at No. 10, up from No. 22 in 2024. Danone is one of very few large companies with B Corp status, with 92.8% of global net sales covered by B Corp certification, and it is targeting 100% coverage by the end of 2025. It is one of just a handful of companies to secure all 10 ESG points in this year’s Top 25. Danone has made water management a centerpiece of its sustainability agenda with its 4R strategy to reduce, reuse, recycle and/or reclaim water. Nearly all production sites have an active plan to reduce water losses, with the key focus being Danone’s 60 sites which operate in water-stressed regions. Danone also continues to advance its agenda to make its operations more autonomous and lay the groundwork for the transition to Industry 5.0. One example is the application of AI-driven technologies at its Opole, Poland plant to develop eco-friendly materials and optimize packaging processes.

The remainder of the Top 25:

No. 11: Nestlé

No. 12: Diageo

No. 13: Walmart

No. 14: The Coca-Cola Company

No. 15: Siemens

No. 16: Novartis

No. 17: General Mills

No. 18: PepsiCo

No. 19: Heineken

No. 20: HP Inc.

No. 21: Sanofi

No. 22: JD.com

No. 23: BMW

No. 24: GSK

No. 25: Intel

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